Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Carving a Bookmark

I recently carved a couple of bookmarks. I'd like to share some aspects of the process. These particular carvings were started away from my regular workbench. I used my small set of Flexcut tools in an old laptop bag. The carving surface is a clipboard with some grip pad on it. The bag does a fairly good job of holding the chips in.

Back at the regular workbench the carving is completed and the lettering is burned in.

The carving will be finished with a water based Minwax stain. First a pre-stain is applied.

After the pre-stain has dried for about 15 minutes, an "English Oak" colored stain is applied.

The stain is allowed to dry over night and then the piece is finished with a coat of Minwax Polycrylic. This will give it a nice hard finish with a nice sheen. I often like to finish with a coat of wax, but since this is intended to go between the pages of a book, I thought it best to forgo the wax.

And there you have it. The lighting in the photographs could be better, but I hope you get the idea.